Читать книгу The Greatest Works of Roman Classical Literature - Луций Анней Сенека - Страница 491

1 The Abbé Thyvon and M. Beauzée contend that by the word virtus, in the original, the historian obviously meant “genius, ability, distinguished talents.”

2 “He alone,” says Seneca, “can be truly said to live, who devotes himself to some purpose of usefulness and activity. The man who indulges in apathy, and sinks into forgetfulness, renders his house like a sepulchre, in which he is virtually entombed.”

3 The house of the Sergii, and not from that of the Cornelii, as stated by some authors.

4 Cicero describes him as the most striking compound of contrary qualities; horribly depraved, but wonderfully versatile; and, if not actually possessed of virtue, yet ingenious, on every occasion, to assume its semblance, to seduce its adherents, and to turn the arts by which it is displayed to the most flagitious purposes.

5 Pericles, according to Thucydides, ascribes a similar conduct to the Athenians; and the historian then adds the following reflection: “He who confers an obligation on another is ever the surest to continue steady in his friendship. The same benevolent temper which prompted him to serve his friend will generate a wish to continue the kindness, and secure his attachment. But the man who labours under the weight of an obligation experiences a feeling of far less alacrity: gratitude, with him, is not an effort of generosity, but the repayment of a debt.”

6 The first senate at Rome consisted of one hundred members, chosen from among the nobles, and was called the Perpetual Council of the State.

7 The profligate conduct of Sextus Tarquinius towards Lucretia, the wife of Collatinus, occasioned this revolution. The wrongs of Lucretia were avenged by the people; and her character has descended to posterity as an example of female chastity and virtue.

8 When they had completed their seventeenth year, and sometimes earlier, according to Vegetius.

9 The Romans bestowed the brightest rewards and the most honourable distinctions to promote valour in the field; hence they were never surpassed in acts of heroism.

10 During the first five centuries they were averse to the cultivation of eloquence or literature, which, as Cicero observes, are incompatible with war and tumult, with the caprice of tyranny, or the changefulness of revolutions.

11 Polybius attributes the success of the Romans to their military discipline; he says, the man who served from his rank in the day of battle was uniformly punished with death.

12 Horace complains, that such was the number of princely palaces which rose at the command of the rich and great, that they threatened to abridge the labours of the husbandman; and even the fish of the sea felt their element contracted by the piles of building which were raised in it.

13 The Roman laws against bribery and corruption, instituted to secure the freedom of elections, were very severe: by that of Cicero, delinquents were rendered liable to banishment for ten years.

14 The particulars of Catiline’s discourse, of which it is difficult to conceive how the historian acquired any very certain information, are well imagined, and agree with Cicero’s account of the proceeding.

15 Florus, Plutarch, and others seem to credit the authenticity of this circumstance.

16 M. T. Cicero was the first of his family who attained to the honours of the state: he was one of the most eminent statesmen, and certainly the greatest orator, philosopher, and critic, that Rome ever produced. He was born at Arpinum, which had formerly been the birthplace of Caius Marius. This inconsiderable town may be truly said to have boasted of men who exemplified the character given by the younger Pliny of true glory, “by doing what deserved to be written, or by writing what deserved to be read.”

17 Singing and dancing were not disreputable among the ancient Romans: they were practised, not only at festivals, but in religious ceremonies. The historian must therefore be understood to apply this remark to Sempronia’s want of modesty.

18 Within the city, even military officers were not, by law, permitted to carry arms: the conspirators must therefore have concealed their poniards or daggers.

19 One of the most eminent and virtuous patriots of this period, who greatly assisted Cicero in putting down the conspiracy.

20 About 807l. 5s. 10d. sterling.

21 The gladiators were men selected from among condemned malefactors, captives, unmanageable slaves, and other ruffians, who were trained to fight for the entertainment of the people. These combats were first exhibited by the sons of Brutus, at the funeral of their father; and the custom seems to have originated in the superstitious notion that the manes of the deceased were appeased, and rendered propitious, by the spilling of human blood. As the Romans were delighted with such exhibitions, they were not long confined to funerals, but restored to on almost every public occasion; and a taste for these bloody spectacles continued to prevail down to the time of Constantine, when it yielded, at length, to the mild spirit of Christianity. But shows of gladiators were not completely suppressed until the reign of Honorius.

22 This was the first of his celebrated orations against Catiline, which was pronounced without premeditation, and gives a high idea of the readiness and genius of the great orator. The feelings of Cicero were, with good reason, strongly excited: the state of the city; his own personal danger; the daring attack on his house, made but the morning before; the presence of some of the conspirators; all conspired to raise his indignation to the highest pitch.

23 Plutarch confirms the account given by Sallust of the manner in which Catiline received this tremendous attack; and adds, that when he entered the senate, and took his seat, none of the members remained on that side of the house.

24 The want of sufficient evidence, according to Appian, prevented the seizure of Catiline. He therefore set out, during the night, to join Manlius at Fæsulæ, previously directing his accomplices to endeavour to assassinate Cicero and set fire to Rome.

25 The army of Manlius was chiefly composed of men who had like himself amassed considerable wealth under Sylla, but which they had dissipated; they were involved in pecuniary difficulties; and there was no class of men against whom the laws were more severe than against debtors. If they could not pay a creditor, or give him ample security, they were given up as slaves. By the laws of the Twelve Tables it was ordained, that when there were several creditors, as it was impossible to satisfy them all, the body of the debtor could even be cut to pieces for that purpose. The greatest severities were also practised at Athens for the recovery of debts: not only the debtor himself, but his children could be seized and sold as slaves in foreign countries, to reimburse the usurer.

26 When the news reached Rome of Catiline’s arrival at the camp of Manlius, the whole senate went into mourning, a measure which was usual only in seasons of public calamity; and Dion Cassius says, that the resolution adopted by Cicero, of remaining in the city, and generously giving up his own province to his colleague Antonius, proved, in a great degree the salvation of the commonwealth.

27 By the laws of Rome parents possessed an exorbitant power over their children. A father could with impunity suffer his infant son to perish. When grown up, he could imprison, send him bound to work in the country, or even put him to death, without assigning a cause. A son could acquire no property without the consent of his father: so that with a parent of a cruel or capricious temper the condition of a slave was, in some respects, more tolerable. A slave could be freed or emancipated by a single act; but a son, in order to become free, or his own master, was first to be sold into slavery, usually to a friend, and then resold by that friend to the father; after which, being on the footing of a slave, he was to be manumitted with the same formalities. When the son was promoted to any public office the parental authority was suspended, by no means abolished; for it continued to be exercised during the father’s life, not only over his children, but over his grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. A daughter, by marriage, passed from the power of her father to that of her husband. In later times the rigour of these institutions was considerably mitigated.

28 A people of Gaul, who inhabited what is now called Dauphiny together with Savoy, Chablais, and Foucigny.

29 Cicero, in his third oration against Catiline, addressed to the people, notices this as a singularly fortunate occurrence to the commonwealth. “Your homage and gratitude to the gods have been often due, but never more justly than in the present juncture.”

30 The capitol was three times destroyed by fire: first, in the time of Sylla’s wars, and this is probably the period alluded to; secondly, during the wars of Vitellius, when it was rebuilt by Vespasian, at whose death it suffered a third time, and was again repaired and decorated by Domitian.

31 Transports of joy were now manifested by all ranks, although the historian appears to confine them to the populace. Cicero received the thanks of the senate, and was hailed as the “father of his country;” a title which no man except himself ever received during the republic, and which the best of the emperors considered as their most distinguished honour.

32 The ministers of religion did not form a distinct order in the state, but were usually chosen from among the citizens of the highest rank.

33 The speeches of Cæsar and Cato on this occasion, which have been justly ranked as masterpieces of ancient composition, must not be considered merely as the productions of the historian. It is generally admitted that both were addressed to the senate in nearly such terms.

34 From the tenor of this passage many writers have been induced to believe that Cæsar inclined to the doctrines of Epicurus; to which Sallust is said to have opposed his own belief of a future state of rewards and punishments.

35 The ancient mode of inflicting capital punishment among the Romans was, after stripping the criminal naked, to fix his head by means of a forked piece of wood, and in that situation to scourge him to death. To avoid such a barbarous punishment the Emperor Nero, who was condemned to suffer it, put himself to death.—The Porcian law, here alluded to, prohibited magistrates from punishing a citizen with death, and substituted in its stead banishment and confiscation of property.

36 In this and other instances Sallust draws closely after Thucydides, who, in the third book of his History, makes a similar complaint against one of the most corrupt periods of the Grecian manners.

37 The idea of bringing the characters of Cato and Cæsar into comparison did not originate with Sallust. A few years before, A.U. 707, Cicero wrote “A Eulogium on Cato,” in which he took an elaborate review of the life of that extraordinary man, in his private, his political and moral character, and extolled him in the warmest terms, as having left no equal behind him. This tract gave rise to much controversy on the subject; and the names of these great men being brought into competition, in a celebrated period, their merits formed a sort of political test to every succeeding age of the empire.

38 In the time of Polybius the Roman legion consisted of four thousand two hundred men; but under Julius Cæsar, and the succeeding emperors, it extended to no fewer than six thousand, or six thousand one hundred, together with the usual complement of three hundred horse. Each legion was divided into ten cohorts, each cohort into three maniples, and each maniple into two centuries. When the century consisted, as its name imports, of a hundred men, the complement of six thousand was accurately made out. According to this establishment, Catiline’s forces did not exceed twelve thousand six hundred men.

39 This was consistent with the policy of the Romans: they considered that the commonwealth could never be defended, except by men who felt some interest in its preservation. Slaves were therefore prohibited, under pain of death, from joining the army.

40 It would be difficult to select from any ancient historian an address from a general to his soldiers equal to the speech of Catiline. That which Tacitus gives to Galgacus, in the Life of Agricola, has been often extolled; but, with the reader of taste, it will not stand the comparison, either for vigour, or spirit, or perfect verisimilitude.

41 The battle of Pistoria, which this action has been called, derived its name from Pistoria, now Pistoia, a considerable district and town in Tuscany. The latter is situated on the river Stella, about twenty miles north-west of Florence.

42 This person is named Furius by Plutarch; and Cicero makes mention of him as one of the ringleaders of the conspiracy.

43 The Romans made use of various devices as standards, or colours; the eagle only was composed of metal, often of gold or silver, and was worshipped by the soldiers with religious reverence.